Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Violent Extremist Offenders

Summary

While much time and effort in terrorism studies has gone into finding an answer to the question of why people radicalise, the question of how to rehabilitate individuals has received renewed attention with the return of many citizens who had joined the Islamic State. This has led to an increase in both programs and interventions aimed at ‘deradicalising’ or ‘disengaging’ individuals as well as studies that aim to assess the effectiveness of such efforts. This article/presentation provides an overview of the main elements of rehabilitation and reintegration programs for violent extremist offenders based on international research assessing 34 rehabilitation and reintegration programs. In the second half of the article, an evaluation of the Dutch approach to reintegrating violent extremist offenders in and after prison is presented. Finally, the main lessons learned from these programs as well as the academic literature are discussed.

Keywords

rehabilitation; reintegration; violent extremism; disengagement; de-radicalisation; prison; recidivism; terrorism; programme effectiveness; evaluation